Does Wearing Jeans Mean You're Depressed?

Sorry, new study out of University of Hertfordshire, I'm calling bull on this one. Not their methodology—just the results. The British school's new data suggests that how a woman dresses is indicative of her emotions. Okay, sure. In fact, of course. Findings such as 57 percent of the women wearing a baggy top when depressed, versus 2 percent doing so when feeling happy and being 10 times more likely to wear a favorite dress when happy hardly feel like news. But here's where the study lost me: More than half of the women surveyed said they wear jeans when depressed and a third would wear jeans when happy. Therefore, the researchers have labelled jeans this depressing article of clothing. "Jeans don't look great on everyone," says professor Karen Pine, who conducted the study. "They are often poorly cut and badly fitting. Jeans can signal that the wearer hasn't bothered with their appearance. People who are depressed often lose interest in how they look and don't wish to stand out, so the correlation between depression and wearing jeans is understandable."

But the difference between 33 percent (the one third who wear jeans while happy) and 50-something percent (the more than half who wear jeans while depressed) doesn't seem that huge to me. On those stats alone, we cannot reduce jeans to sweatpants-level sad. I think the findings simply reflect how much we truly love jeans—we wear them in good times and bad. I guess I solidly belong in the 33 percent of women who wear jeans when happy, because I wear them four to five times a week, no matter what. My denim collection is almost embarrassingly large. Like Amanda Seyfried, I not only wear jeans often but talk about them to a boring degree. (Check out the quotes on her IMDB page.) I love how they fit, and have found it dangerous to my finances to work so close to the Levis store in Times Square. (Though it's killing me that they don't make the Eco skinny anymore. They were the best!)